CNET News: House Web site overwhelmed by e-mails

October 1 2008

As Andrew and others have noticed, the US House of Representatives is having a bit of an inbound mail volume issue...

The House has implemented measures to limit the amount of e-mails flowing through to congressmen during high-traffic periods. If a person is tries to e-mail his representative during one of those periods, he may receive a mechanized response indicating the system is overwhelmed and to try later. Ventura said the problem could last through the week.

"We had people working on it all night, and we still do," he said.
It took some digging to be absolutely sure, but John Goodson found documentation that indicates that the US House upgraded or migrated to Exchange 2003 during 2H2007.

Link: CNET News: House Web site overwhelmed by e-mails >

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Messaging  Add/View Comments [7]

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  1. 1  David Schaffer http://bloginprogress.us | 10/1/2008 4:17:18 PM

    The way I read the release it was the "send us an e-mail" form on the website, not the mail system, that got overwhelmed.

    Netcraft.com shows www.house.gov running a custom web server behind Akamai.

  1. 2  Carl Tyler http://www.iminstant.com | 10/1/2008 4:35:19 PM

    This feels like one of those things that can come and bite you in the butt. If IBM had a great track record for super reliable systems I'd say fair target, but Partner and Customer Sametime Gateway anyone?

  1. 3  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 10/1/2008 5:50:36 PM

    @1 - You are correct this is a website issue not a mail issue.

    It's something for the "Ed Brill of Webphere" to be talking about (assuming it's not already running on WAS).

  1. 4  Richard Schwartz http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com | 10/1/2008 8:58:26 PM

    @1,3: Yep. It took me about 8 tries to get my message posted to my Congressman via his web site.

  1. 5  Alan Bell http://webbookblog.com | 10/2/2008 10:47:50 AM

    but the website and the email infrastructure are connected by tubes. We already have it on good authority that it can take several days for an internet to get through those tubes. Maybe the "Ed Brill of the Tubes" should be talking about this?

  1. 6  David Schaffer http://bloginprogress.us | 10/2/2008 1:21:23 PM

    Interesting followup article on InfoWorld:

    { Link }

  1. 7  Adam Fenstermaker  | 10/2/2008 2:08:58 PM

    Ed - I'm sure they could slip some Domino licenses into the bailout package. You call your congressman yet?